Incident Eight
by Namida-sama
Summary: Budget cuts leave Theodore Hamilton Secondary School totally undefended during Virus season, and when a group of rogue infected patients descends upon Hikari's classroom, she and her fellow students must find a way to escape the chaos of the locked-down school while avoiding the hungry crowds of brain-dead predators who were once her classmates, lest they succumb to the disease.


A few notes before we begin this particular embarrassment. I am from Canada, and in my district, high school periods last an hour and fifteen minutes and we have four per day. It's pretty simple stuff. Also, we don't have school nurses or anything, so I won't be mentioning them.

I don't own Harvest Moon. Why would I be writing Fanfiction if I could be writing the real thing in game form?

If you're here for fluffy romance (why would you be?) you won't get it. But if you happen to be in the market for violence and teen-typical strong language and sex talks, I believe I have what you're looking for. It's essentially high school and zombies, and I'm not altogether sure if I want this to stay up for a long time.

* * *

Hikari's desk, which she liked to call The Fuck Desk because of the plethora of obscene language carved into it, was towards the far side of the windowless, airless geography classroom at the center of the school, down a long, perpetually dim hall. Its other charms included a very detailed collection of black-marker penises drawn on the inside, and the usual "Toby's mother is a whore" graffiti.

She had stared that shit down a billion times out of boredom. She had analyzed the handwriting so often and in such depth she knew who had written it and could forge his signature.

But that day, she was thinking of other things, like how _insanely_ hard it was to breathe through her surgical mask, which she had picked up at a cute store downtown- it had a pale pink rabbit print, which, looking back, didn't really suit her. Should've gone with the blue ducks. There was a glass door at the end of the dark hall, a door she would have liked to sprint through to get a little fresh air, that had been patched up clumsily with green tape. The morose and greasy inhabitants of the nearby low-income housing block considered it great fun to chuck stones through the panels of the door, and after a while, Hamilton Theodore Secondary School's budget just wouldn't hold out for repairs.

The blonde girl to her immediate left would prop up her textbook just so as to be able to dick around on her phone all day every day without attracting the attentions of the geography teacher. There was a shaggy-haired boy in the back who was forever in a semi-lucid dimension of daydreams, and was purportedly solely responsible for seventy-five percent of the school's marijuana consumption. The teacher was youngish, a thirtysomething with hair streaked liberally with silver, who totally lacked not only power of observation, but also control of the class. Rumors floated around every so often of her recent year-long absence- that she had had a psychotic episode or nervous breakdown.

Hikari was a good student, diligent, comfortably above average in everything, but not so outstanding as to attract any attention. She had her acquaintances, but on the whole had a quiet, mousy social life that was distinctly characteristic of a wallflower. Which was something of a disappointment- she considered herself not only agreeable and pleasant, and also damn fun to be around, maybe.

Theodore Hamilton was renowned in the district for three things: its well-equipped and heavily recommended culinary arts program, the similarly endowed carpentry and woodworking programs, and its wealth of hot guys. There were some fine specimens even among the goths, who were known as something of an acquired taste. There were a couple in the hall when Hikari went to her locker between classes- that one foreign guy with the facial tattoo and the blonde hair of whose home country no one was certain, and the pale girl with the witch hat.

That particular week, all average, boring daily nuances aside, there was an extensive crew of inspectors present at the school, who came in massive, unmarked vans with windows tinted to dark opacity. They were up on ladders for a solid three days, moving the cheap plaster ceiling tiles around, pulling at old, dusty wires and clucking their tongues at the shattered doors. The next Monday, they announced that their funding for the year had been cut by seven percent, and to compensate, they were suspending the activities of all school-funded clubs whose regular attendance was less than fifteen students. That included the woodworking club, which got Luke, resident shit-for-brains loudmouth, all worked up. He started in vain three petitions to combat the decision, as well as public demonstrations and speeches atop a portable platform that he had made himself. Ultimately, he failed, as many politicians similarly do, to rouse any interest in the student body, and only stirred irritation instead. To this day, the video shot by the nasty punk who threw the half-full beer can at Luke during one of his public rants still swims around the collective unconscious of the internet.

It was a significant time because it was early spring, and just as the first little plants were poking jup their heads, Virus season had descended upon the city.

Most of the aforementioned students, be they jocks, or goths, or freaks, or wallflowers, were decked out in surgical masks. Nobody kissed or even hugged this time of year. If you wanted to hold hands, you did it through a pair of sterile rubber gloves. The janitors had to replace the little soap and hand sanitizer cartridges throughout the school twice a day for a solid month. A suffocating, whispering gloom had descended upon the school, and the students were too nervous to even speak above a whisper in the halls- there were no pranks, no rambunctiousness. They'd seen the hospitals as children, and they knew very well what the Virus did to you- how hard it was to get the cure in time. And later, as older children, they began to know how it felt to hear the murmurs of your peers when they heard that one of your relatives had caught the virus. A sort of relieved, glad-it-wasn't-me pity that made you boil inside with embarrassment and frustration. And as they got older, and security technologies couldn't keep up with infection rates, they were taught to accept the Virus as an inevitable fact of growing up: someone you loved was going to become a mindless raving cannibal, and if you couldn't fork out for the cure, they would be shot dead like an old horse. On the other hand, the insurance business was thriving madly as if on steroids. Virus insurance. Your health coverage wouldn't cut it. Life insurance refused to shell out a goddamn dime.

A new, mandatory freshman class was added to the curriculum, mashed-up self-defence lessons born from a dubious yellow and black book written by some fanatical weapons enthusiast somewhere overseas.

Little kids had rhymes about it, and at your local doctors' office, you could get a mountain of pamphlets and cards and tests about what it did to you.

Inform Your Doctor Within Twelve Hours If You Are Experiencing Any Of The Following Symptoms:

Chills lasting more than four hours

Stiffness and aches, sudden joint pain

Tingling progressing to loss of feeling in the limbs

Hacking, bloody cough

Blood in the saliva and urine

…

Be advised that this virus is extremely contagious and if you experience any symptoms, report to your doctor or government healthcare professional immediately for quarantine. ONE WEEK MAY BE TOO LATE!

And everywhere, safety brochures! In every shop, office, on every polished desk.

Generally, an infected person could be identified by their vacant, glazed eyes, and the obvious necrosis in their limbs, like one huge purple-black bruise that covered everything. They had no reaction to pain and could walk their awkward limping shamble-walk through raging fires. They could face debilitating injury and keep on going: they could not feel the pain that would ordinarily be screaming at them to stop.

They were extremely aggressive and would attack without provocation- research had revealed a form of brain damage that paralyzed certain nervous cells in the brain and pared the afflicted person's abilities down to their most primal, violent drives. They could not communicate, nor understand any form of communication or reasoning, but only made a constant phlegmatic growl from their diaphragms. They had effectively ceased to be human, and were not to be touched or approached.

The school board had made some accommodations safety-wise after receiving a couple of complaints (and lawsuits) – but the money had spread a little thin by the time it reached Theodore Hamilton, and they could only afford to reinforce the main entranceway. Their precautions were concerned mainly with keeping the infected out and the students in. And that was exactly the problem in the situation Hikari found herself in in period three.

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Yes, ok.

Thank you for reading/reviewing and everything else.


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